


wanna be where you are (you're the right one)

by lesbiankavinsky



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, M/M, Multi, Trans Male Character, and me validating my own trans guy mary feelings, at this point i don't have a plot? this is just character work, the kids navigate their feelings about college and home and life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 00:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13065027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/lesbiankavinsky
Summary: No one was surprised when Edith followed Mark to Downton University -- she’d always felt the need to prove she could do anything Mark could -- but Sybil had been determined to break with the family tradition and go elsewhere. Their parents had met here and all three of the children had grown up in Downton U sweatshirts and been hauled out every year to the Downton-Leeds football match. Sybil had decided at the age of seven that she would go to university anywhere but Downton. Only then she’d fallen in love with biology, and the best biology department in the country was, of course, at Downton. It’s strange, navigating this place that has existed so vividly in her imagination for her entire life, and stranger still that all her friends know both Mark and Edith and, for the most part, don’t like them.





	wanna be where you are (you're the right one)

It’s thanks to Sybil’s job as a lab assistant that she has keys to the biology building and can sneak herself, Tom, and Gwen up to the roof on Friday nights. On Fridays and Saturdays the library closes early and the dorms are full of partying students and the three of them like to sit up here with a bottle of wine, looking out over the sprawling campus and talking until the small hours. Gwen is lying with her feet in Tom’s lap and her head in Sybil’s and Sybil is playing with her hair. “What I want to know,” Gwen says, eyes closed and voice sleepy, “is how those two got such nice boyfriends.”

“You’ve got a pretty nice boyfriend,” Tom says.

Sybil flicks him on the shoulder before saying, “You shouldn’t ask me that, Gwen, Mark’s my brother.”

“And you love him, but even you wouldn’t call him  _ nice. _ ”

“Maybe not, but I do think he deserves Matthew, all the same. They’re happy together.”

Gwen sighs. “He’s alright when he’s with Matthew, but when he’s with Thomas he’s -- well, you know. I’d never have signed up for that seminar if I knew the two of them would be in it.”

“I can’t say I think Thomas is a good influence,” Sybil says, a little reluctantly. Really, she thinks, this is what she gets for going to the same school as both her siblings. No one was surprised when Edith followed Mark to Downton University -- she’d always felt the need to prove she could do anything Mark could -- but Sybil had been determined to break with the family tradition and go elsewhere. Their parents had met here and all three of the children had grown up in Downton U sweatshirts and been hauled out every year to the Downton-Leeds football match. Sybil had decided at the age of seven that she would go to university  _ anywhere  _ but Downton. Only then she’d fallen in love with biology, and the best biology department in the country was, of course, at Downton. It’s strange, navigating this place that has existed so vividly in her imagination for her entire life, and stranger still that all her friends know both Mark and Edith and, for the most part, don’t like them. “But really,” Sybil continues, “you’d like Mark if you knew him.”

Tom makes a small sound that she chooses to ignore.

“Maybe,” Gwen says. Gwen’s always been a little softer on Mark than Tom, but that’s unsurprising given that Tom’s first meeting with her brother involved Mark accusing him of fetishizing lesbians. He’s never really understood polyamory. “All the same, I hope they don’t come back to GSA.”

Sybil snorts. “They won’t. They hate it.” Sybil had given up on involving Mark in any kind of LGBT activism back in highschool when he’d told Sybil, while ill-temperedly adjusting his hair in the mirror, that he had no intention of making a display of either his gender identity or his sexuality. Thomas, as far as she can tell, has essentially the same attitude. But Thomas’ sweet and somewhat sad boyfriend, Edward, shows up most weeks and seems to appreciate the community, even if he doesn’t talk much. The fact that he’s dating Thomas had surprised Sybil, and she has regular and rather bemused conversations with Gwen and Tom about how they get on at all. 

But Sybil understands Mark and Matthew. Matthew has been coming to visit during holidays since Mark’s freshman year and Sybil still remembers seeing them together for the first time, being amazed by how Mark softened in Matthew’s presence, how easily they made one another laugh. Even she, as his sister, didn’t have that kind of ease with Mark. Mark is all smiles and charm with most people but there’s a hardness to that persona of his, a cold, smooth gloss like rock candy or metal. Sybil has never seen him more earnest that with Matthew, and it makes her both happy and a little heartachey. It’s been a long time now since she had access to that side of him. Now, her finger tangled up in Gwen’s hair, Sybil considers how to explain her brother to these two people who she loves so much and who have never quite understood her family. 

“Mark’s trouble is that he’s constantly waiting for an attack. He’s a little like Tom, I guess.” Tom opens his mouth to protest but Sybil goes on before he has a chance. “Only Tom’s response is fire, and Mark’s is ice. Until he trusts you completely, he’ll never show weakness. Which means he’ll never show any -- real kindness or vulnerability or -- love. But he is capable of tremendous love. You just can’t see it from a distance.”

“All I know is he stares daggers at me whenever I’m over at Matthew’s,” Tom says, but without malice in his voice. Sybil likes this about Tom, that he doesn’t mind other people hating him. He spends enough of his time making enemies that he’s developed a thick skin about it. “I just don’t see how he and Mark get along with such different opinions.”

“They like sparring,” Sybil says. “I’d have thought you’d understand that.”

Tom shrugs. “I like to argue,” he admits. “But not with the people I love.”

It’s because of Sybil that Tom knows Matthew, and because of her ability and willingness to pull strings at Downton that he’d gotten Matthew as a mentor. They’re both pre-law and the school assigns every freshman in the program a senior mentor. The assignments are supposed to be random, but the Downton administrators have known Sybil since she was a toddler and she can usually get her way with a smile and a well-placed offer to go on a coffee run. Not that she uses it too often. 

Sybil leans over to kiss Tom’s shoulder. “He doesn’t understand why we’re happy, and I suppose we don’t have to understand why he is, either.”

“No,” Tom says. “I guess we don’t.” He smiles down at Gwen. “I think she’s asleep.”

“Oh, no, she is,” Sybil says with a rueful smile. “I keep telling her she needs to get more sleep. She works entirely too hard.”

“Come on,” Tom says. “Let’s get her to bed.”

 

He hasn’t always liked the name Mark, even if he did choose it himself. It was a compromise, really, something close enough to his birth name to appease his parents but still distinctly male. He didn’t like the name until he heard it on Matthew’s tongue, truth be told, but it’s such a sappy thing that he wouldn’t tell anyone that, not even Thomas. He’d met Matthew his freshman year in an intro political science class. Back then he was newly out, still trying to adjust his wardrobe, binding and constantly torn between his well-bred good posture and the instinct to hunch so as to hide his chest. All the books he had gotten from the library and hidden under his bed, all the articles he read online in incognito mode in the middle of the night told him that coming out would allow him to own his identity, to become more confident, but he found the opposite to be true. Impeccably performed femininity had been his armor, his currency in the world. Now, without it, he felt terribly, fearfully, vulnerably  _ himself _ . He knew it was for the best in the long run, but it was still difficult in those first months to even get out of bed. Being in a lecture hall full of people was a nightmare. And then Matthew had appeared, with his good looks and his easy manner and he’d sat down next to Mark and asked his name. When Mark had replied, Matthew had grinned, wide and unexpected. 

“I’m Matthew,” he said. “We’re like the Gospels, you and me.” It was such an odd response that Mark found himself smiling and then immediately mentally slapping himself for feeling the first flickering of a crush on this guy who he’d literally just met. 

And so he’d pursed his lips to disguise the smile and said, “I suppose so.”

The two of them had spent that entire semester arguing in and out of class about politics and law and somehow those arguments had become the highlights of Mark’s weeks. They’d become more teasing, more affectionate, more understanding. Then, on the last day of class before winter break, they were the last two left in the lecture hall, talking and slowly, slowly packing up their things.

“You know,” Matthew said, “I really don’t understand you.”

“What don’t you understand about me?”

“How you can be so conservative.”

“Come on, I’m not even a proper Tory.”  
“I mean -- I can’t imagine having your politics,” Matthew went on. He’d stopped putting his things away and was looking at Mark appraisingly. In those days Mark hated to be looked at so he ducked his head and pretended to be looking for something in his backpack. “Even if my mother wasn’t so liberal, even if -- I can’t imagine, once I’d come out, I can’t imagine arguing the point of view you argue.”

Mark straightened and ran a hand through his hair. “You know me, I’m not a Thatcher apologist --”

“You’re a bit of a Thatcher apologist,” Matthew cut in, grinning.

“I believe in the free market, sue me. No, I mean -- I mean even when I don’t agree with every conservative policy, I think there’s something to be said for tradition.”

“Even when most people who say that would want you hospitalized.”

Mark’s expression shifted. Someone who knew him less well would hardly have noticed, but Matthew’s smile dropped immediately and he said, “I’m sorry, Mark, that was thoughtless of me.”

“It’s alright,” Mark said, trying not to sound like he was going to cry, standing and pulling his backpack over his shoulder. Matthew was between him and the aisle and unless he wanted to clamber over the row of chairs below them or shuffle past twenty seats in the opposite direction, Matthew would have to move for Mark to leave. 

“Listen,” Matthew said, “I guess that’s what I mean. I mean, it must be hard, believing what you believe and knowing that most people who agree with you wouldn’t accept you. You’re strong and you’re smart and I admire you even if we often don’t see eye to eye.”

Unsure if he was touched or upset, Mark tugged at the strap of his backpack and just said, “Okay.”

Matthew, strangely, was getting rather flustered. “I’m sorry, this all came out wrong. I guess -- I wanted to tell you I’m so glad we ended up in this class together and that I sat down with you that first day and that you fight with me every week. It’s been an honor. And I was wondering if you might give me your number.”

Mark blinked. “Is this a really odd way of asking me out on a date?”  
Matthew laughed his small, charming laugh. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

They ended up making out in the lecture hall -- somewhat awkwardly, given the narrow seats -- as outside the snow fell in thicker and thicker flurries. All through the holidays that winter Mark was to be found on windowsills and on counters, perched on the back of the sofa, the nail of his thumb between his teeth as he smiled down at the lit-up screen of his phone, at another text from Matthew. The two have been as good as married ever since, perpetually teased by their friends for their easy domesticity which does in fact seem more suited to a middle-aged couple than to college kids. 

They have a long standing tradition of Friday being date night, and it is absolutely sacred. Their pact is that they are allowed to blow one another off on any other night of the week to study to to spend time with other friends, so long as Friday night is always for the two of them. This week they’re going out to dinner in Ripon, far enough from campus to feel like real adults, which is something they’ve both been craving of late. Mark is at the mirror, tying his tie as Matthew moves about the room, humming and fidgeting.

“Ready,” Mark says, adjusting the knot. 

Matthew comes up behind him and presses a kiss to his temple. “Pretty boy.”

Mark smiles at him in the mirror. “I know.”

As much as Mark loves date night, he sometimes wishes they could just spend it in their room together. Aside from his sisters, Matthew is the only person with whom Mark never feels like he’s acting. He’s good at playing the bright, charming college student but it does get tiring and behind closed doors, everything is just a little easier. Driving down to Ripon and passing all the familiar landmarks, Mark has to consider, too, the fact that he won’t be at Downton much longer. Here, even if wears him down, he knows who he’s supposed to be, and he’s good at being that person. In three short months he’ll be graduating, and he isn’t really sure who he’ll be when that happens. It feels a little as though the world is ending. When he’d told Matthew that, Matthew had squeezed his hand and said, “Well, you’ll still have me when the sky falls down.” Remembering those words, Mark reaches out a hand to touch Matthew’s shoulder.

Matthew glances at him, eyebrows raised. “Nothing,” Mark says, with the smile that he knows, even four years down the road, still has the power to charm Matthew. “I just like to remind myself that you’re here.”

 

Matthew, in the driver’s seat, turns his eyes back to the road with a little difficulty. He always loves Mark, but he can’t help having a particular fondness for this private Mark, so much softer around the edges than he would ever be with anyone else. All the same, he likes that he gets to watch Mark in public, see that chameleon shift into a different persona. Mark in public is witty and untouchable, the brightest jewel of any gathering. But Matthew’s favorite moments with Mark are in classroom debates. Mark is a fighter and will hold his ground as long as he still believes what he’s saying but then, every once in awhile, Matthew actually gets to see Mark’s mind change. Someone will say something, phrase a point a certain way, introduce a new piece of information and Mark will go still, much stiller than he usually is in conversation, and he’ll blink, and there’ll be a little shift around his mouth, and then he’ll raise his eyebrows and say, “Okay, you’re right.” And then Matthew thinks yes, without a doubt, this is the one for him. This is how Mark has slowly but inexorably become less conservative over their four years at Downton. Matthew knows, though, that it hasn’t all been about Markfinding people who can argue well enough to convince him. Matthew has watched as Mark meets people whose lives are affected by politics more than either of theirs ever could be -- immigrants and first generation students, kids who’d grown up working class, people who were, Matthew suspects, entirely hypothetical in Mark’s worldview until shamefully late in life. Matthew had liked Mark for his conviction but he likes him better for his open mind and his willingness to admit when he’s wrong. Matthew still remembers Mark on that first day of classes with his monogrammed backpack and monogrammed sweater and that confident smile which Matthew can now so easily distinguish from his real smile. It really had been the strangest feeling -- Matthew had liked Mark instantly while simultaneously not wanting to like him. Trying to keep himself from falling in love with Mark had been as hopeless a battle as trying to keep himself from liking him and now, standing on the brink of real adulthood, Matthew can only be grateful that he knows with unshakable certainty who he’s going to spend his life with.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @toomanyfeelings5 on tumblr for proofing! Come talk to me @trans-orpheus about Pretty Boy Mark Crawley and my itemized list of the ways in which Julian Fellowes has personally wronged me


End file.
